


Sweet dreams are made of this

by somewhat_ethereal



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 10:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3352571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somewhat_ethereal/pseuds/somewhat_ethereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmilla can't sleep, set mid-season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet dreams are made of this

Being a vampire has all sorts of fun and disturbing little ‘perks’ and Carmilla has learned to acclimatise to them in all 312 years of her afterlife, apart from perhaps one; the night terrors.

Admittedly her experiences as a human are infinitesimal in number in contrast to those as a vampire, and they were several centuries ago. So she supposes it’s not really a fair comparison, but nevertheless she is certain not one of her dreams as a mortal came even close to the intensity of those as a vampire.

The human subconscious is not capable of the sort of realism that the vampire subconscious is, and that really is a perk when Carmilla has that lovely dream about pressing her mouth to Laura’s neck and she can actually feel her pulse throbbing against her lips. It is less of a perk when she dreams of, in startling detail, the exact feeling of flesh tearing and ribs shattering as a stake is forced into her chest. That’s about as far from a perk as one can get.

Not only that but a vampire’s imagination is an incredibly powerful thing, so powerful in fact that it often influences those they spend a great deal of time around. The more powerful mind has precedence so it’s only natural (although worrying with Laura so close) that Carmilla’s own dreams infect humans and most of her younger siblings. It’s also only natural that, in all the years she’d spent travelling across Europe with Mother, she’d never once had a dream of her own.  Mother’s dreams were always gory scenes, blood welling from deep wounds and pouring like silk over plump flesh, and her nightmares were always the same, a single slit of light in a wall with no doors or windows.

Carmilla’s nightmares are just as formulaic. Hundreds of years and you’d think her subconscious could provide some new material to be fucking terrified of. Alas there are themes of fears and memories which return again and again, and tonight is no exception.

_It is dark and close. She can feel the body pressing against her own, the sharp insistent pain in her neck is there in the dream/memory but it is not nearly as overwhelming as force of being pressed against this wall and surrounded from all sides by one body._

_A hand fisted in her hair, dragging her head back and to the side, an elbow thrust against the wall to one side of her head, the other side trapped by hair, face, neck and the bruising force of the fingers around her throat holding her in place an inch off the floor with inhuman strength. The heels of her shoes skittered across the floor as she thrashed ineffectually against her assailant. The only smell, sight, sounds are of this person; the man who killed her._

_It’s all so real._

_Her eyes blink slowly, sleepily, like they did that night. Each time the darkness creeps into the corner of her vision until finally she can see nothing._

_The darkness is everywhere. There is no air to breathe; there is only the strange awareness that she is no longer where she was before. Everywhere she touches is hard, smooth surface. It is damp, smells of blood. Then suddenly she knows exactly where she is and she’s screaming, begging, mother, mama, please please, don’t leave me here. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry._

_There is blood, blood everywhere, just enough to keep her alive._

_It was like that for a long time. Carmilla crying till her throat was coarse and dry then lying silently in contemplation as her muscles atrophied. It wasn’t all at once that she realised that it had changed; it was just a slight awareness of a change in the air. The surface above her was no longer the smooth sticky lid of her coffin, but the slats of a bedframe, and the sides were no longer firm but rather a continuous curtain of blood which poured endlessly from either side. She could sense a heartbeat of a body on the bed directly above her, and she could hear the ragged breathing and weeping._

_It is a girl, a little girl, and she is crying. She can’t see her, but Carmilla knows she’s there, can sense her on some level. She’s scared, she’s miserable. Suddenly words her mother had spoken years, centuries, ago came to her now. “Blood must be spilled before old Gods.”_

_This bed was an altar, this girl the sacrifice._

_Then the next thing she knows little girl is her. Carmilla is in the bed. She wears the white nightgown and the darkness runs all over her, filling her eyes, nose and mouth. She’s still crying, still calling out for her mother._

She awoke slowly, like a submerged ship being raised from beneath the ocean.

She was shaking though she is not capable of getting cold and sweating though she cannot get warm. She wanted to cry but vampires cannot cry. She felt bigger than her skin, too tight in this space, in this room, in this body. She would throw up, if vampires could. Within her mind a dispassionate voice provided her with the situation in its most factual form ‘you’re having a panic attack’, and it is that which makes her throw herself from the bed and stumble to the window. Tearing open the curtains and hoisting up the window pane before hanging half out of it and breathing slow, deep breaths that she doesn't need to take.

Carmilla tries to deal in facts, repeating them to herself like a mantra. _You are a student of Silas University. You are in the Bartram-Haugh Dormitory where you share a room with Laura Hollis. You have been above ground for nearly a century now. You are safe._ The last fact rings untrue but she forces herself to say it anyway. _Safe, safer than you could be._

It takes several minutes before she had calmed down enough to have proper control of her body again, during this time she stared into the sky and tried to force her thoughts onto any other subject at all. The sky. It was beautiful shades of blue, purple and pink as the sun set somewhere behind the university buildings, and she could see the moon but not the stars. The stars make her feel better. They are so large, so far away, there are so many of them. Her life seems so small compared to the stars. The perspective helps when the panic comes after these attacks.

Carmilla sits and watches for an hour or two as the sun sets completely, waiting for the stars.

* * *

 

It was around 8 am the next morning and the curtains were closed against the coming dawn. Carmilla had been lying there for hours, not even the smell of Laura on pillow can lull her to unconsciousness. She should sleep, she will feel fragile and sickly without it, but she doesn't actually want to. The reason for this is fear. Fear of dreams, fear of how close and confined this room feels with the curtains closed and unable to see the sky. She should be scared of something more sensible than this, more sensible than sleep. Like death, or her mother.

Sleep is something which honestly, Carmilla would think that immortal beings of the night would be able to do without, like food or oxygen. But apparently not and so she is subject to night after night of torture for all of eternity if someone doesn't decide to just kill her already.

The very first time she slept as a vampire is one of her clearest memories from the time of her birth. It is carved into her mind; it was the same night as the very first time she took a life.

She remembers the first time, not the name of the girl or even her face, but the taste of her blood and the way afterwards she’d looked drowsily up at her mother with pupils blown wide, cheeks flushed and lips parted, drunk on blood and death. Mother had swept her hair back from her sweaty brow and leant forward kissing the blood from her mouth before speaking. “Mother doesn’t like it when you waste food, my dearest one.” Then in that hypnotically soothing voice began to urge her to sleep in a language Carmilla had not known.

That had been the first time she slept as a vampire, and her dreams had been like a secondary ecstasy to that which she’d just experienced. The aftershock, the taste that lingered, she didn't have a problem with killing for a long time after that. It seemed worth it, for the high and for mother’s approval.

The memory is instantly tainted with that of another time. Of walking across a continent she could hardly recognise, afraid and confused. She’d killed the first people she met in this dystopian future. They were an elderly couple who tried to kindly take her to a hospital but she was too far gone with hunger. She took every last drop of blood in their bodies before abandoning their corpses at the roadside. She remembers going back to her mother because really where else had she to go? Remembers mother taking her into her arms as if it had been 8 months not 80 years that she’d been away. Remembers the way she’d kissed her forehead and murmured “I know that children need their freedom, need their rebellion, but you know now that only Mother loves you don’t you? That girl could never love you for what you are, my darling.”

Carmilla would have cried, if vampires could, but instead just let her mother embrace her and felt the sobs build within her chest without the ability to properly release them, leaving her whole body trembling until once again she fell into a deep sleep filled with dreams of memories that were not her own.

It might have been understandable for her to hate her mother after that, but she didn't. It was definitely sensible to fear her, and she did. But the most persistent emotions from that harrowing time were hurt, betrayal and mistrust.

When asked why she led all these girls to their uncertain doom for all these years, it was easy to claim certain motives; fear, survival, obligation even. Those were certainly part of it; obligation absolutely is considering how much her mother has done for her over the years. But that’s not all of it. What would Laura think if she admitted that so much of her reason was love? How would she react to the fact that so often Carmilla had only wanted to please her mother, only wanted for her mother to love her knowing that the only way to get that love was to throw away her humanity bit by bit? No, Laura would never understand how, even now, Carmilla loved her mother.

Laura stirred in her sleep, groaning before turning to face across the room at Carmilla, who only then realised that all this time she’d been staring at Laura sleeping instead of actually attempting to sleep herself. This crush is getting out of control.

“Morning,” Laura yawned, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Good Morning.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“No, I’m just lying here for the good of my health.”

“Alright Miss ‘Mad, Bad and Dangerous to know’,” Laura said with a long suffering sigh, before getting out of bed and crawling in besides Carmilla.

Ignoring the friendly gibe Carmilla began to weakly protest, feeling all the more pathetically Byronic for having to do so rather than simply accepting the offer of comfort. “What are you doing? Don’t you have an early lecture?”

“Yeah, but it’s more important that you’re feeling ok, besides I’m a little homesick.”

“Couldn’t you go cling to Boudicca’s reincarnation instead?”

After a theatrical moment of consideration, tapping her chin and looking thoughtfully off into the distance, Laura chuckled and wrapped her arms around Carmilla’s waist. “I suppose I could, but maybe I want to cuddle you.”

An embarrassingly tight feeling suddenly took hold of her chest and Carmilla felt her cheeks burn in the dark of the room. Only then did she consent to actually wrapping her arms round the smaller girl and relaxed into the embrace. It wasn't long before exhaustion, comfort and the rising of the sun began to have their effect. As Carmilla hovered between consciousness and sleep she let herself hope that maybe she could make Laura understand, and maybe they could bring things to a close with her mother without it ending in tragedy.

The last thing Carmilla heard before she finally submitted to sleep was a mumbled “Sweet dreams.”

**Author's Note:**

> The characters and world used in this work of fiction do not belong to me.


End file.
